Swimming Upstream (13 page)

“I fell. Down some steps.”

“Well I never,” said Zara, shaking her head and
twisting back and forth on her heel, her hands behind her. “Fancy seeing you
here.” Suddenly, she leapt forward, bent down towards me, and grabbed both my
wrists. “Hey, where are you going now?” she asked.

I looked beyond her at my extended leg. “Well, I
don't exactly have any plans.”

“Stay right where you are. I'm off duty in fifteen
minutes.” Zara leapt to her feet and hurried off down the corridor.

“Don't go away!” she yelled back over her
shoulder.

“Right,” I muttered, staring at my bandaged ankle.

A quarter of an hour later, Zara reappeared with
the same old black raincoat on that I’d seen her in all those years ago. She
had a woolly beret on her head that looked like a tea cosy. She was pushing a
wheelchair.

“Hop in,” she ordered.

I shook my head. “You can't be serious.”

Zara regarded me for a moment, puzzled, and then,
before I could protest any further, came round behind me, grabbed me under both
arms and hoisted me up in one swift movement and deposited me into the canvas
seat. I was amazed at her strength; her tiny and frail-looking appearance was
belied by the muscularity of a brawny six-footer.

“Christ, I'm not going to argue with you,” I
laughed as Zara wheeled me down the corridor, through the double doors of A &
E and out into the car park. “You’re like Rambo. Or the Incredible Hulk.”

“Six years of lifting old codgers onto bedpans,”
said Zara, pushing faster and skidding along behind me. “And old ladies into
baths.”

A balmy breeze was whipping my hair round my face.
I screamed with laughter and Zara giggled from behind me as she got faster and
faster, negotiating her way deftly through the parked cars and ambulances and
out through the gates onto the road.

“I hope you don't do this to your patients,” I
yelled.

“ 'Course I do - they love it,” Zara shouted back.

“Where are we going, anyway?” I lifted my head
towards her.

“King's Arms,” said Zara, slowing down as we
headed out of the gates and across the square outside.

“The where? I haven't got any money…” I protested.
“I’ve lost my car. And my purse.”

“You are
so
accident prone Lizzie,” said
Zara. “Anyway, don't worry about that. I've got money.” She levered me up onto
the kerb and parked me outside a small, noisy pub. “Boy, do I need a drink,”
she said. “I've had the shittiest day you would not believe.”

From my wheelchair, I twisted my head back again,
and surveyed her caustically.

“Really?” I said. “No kidding.”

The King's Arms in Smithfield was a classic seventeenth
century back-street pub with a beautiful half-beamed exterior, hanging baskets
and wooden beer casks lined up along the outside. Inside the public bar was an
expanse of wood panelling, oak beams and a polished wood floor. The seating was
provided by antique settles and benches and there was a beautiful inglenook
fireplace in the corner. That evening the pub was jam-packed with hospital
staff who had just come off duty. They stood or swayed around the bar area in
an imposing mass, the hum of excited chatter filling the air along with loud
screeches of laughter and clouds of cigarette smoke, the nearby tables
overflowing with drinks. One girl had removed her stockings and used them to
blindfold one of her male colleagues, who was now the delighted recipient of a
lengthy embrace from an unknown female on tiptoes. She was being egged on by
the crowd behind her.

“Friday night,” said Zara, as she edged her way
into a gap at the bar. “Everyone goes a bit mad. What are you having?”

“A pint of lager please. And I’d better have some
crisps.”

“Two pints of lager,” she said to the barman. “A
bag of cheese and onion, and,” - looking at me for approval and finding no
argument - “a couple of whisky chasers?”

We found a table at the back of the pub. Zara
hopped me into my seat, placed my leg on the chair in front of me and went back
to fetch the drinks. I looked around me at the old black and white photos of
Smithfield market that were pinned to the oak beams nearby. In one, a slim man
in a white apron who looked like Charlie Chaplin was grinning broadly in the
sunshine and holding up a very large fish. He looked so ridiculously happy that
it made me wonder if that was all it took for some people: a sunny day and a
big fish.

I lit a cigarette and exhaled deeply. Zara
reappeared with the drinks. “So, how have you been?” she asked, slipping in
beside me. “Tell me everything.”

So I did.

“I never liked that Jude,” said Zara, loyally,
when I’d finished.

“I never liked that Marion,” I smiled back.

A cheer exploded from the crowd next to us.

“Hooray!” said Zara. “Hooray for us!” We clinked
glasses.

“Just look at that lot,” Zara smiled. She nodded
in the direction of the bar. “They're going for it tonight.”

“Wild,” I agreed.

“Are you shocked?” she asked.

“Not really,” I said truthfully. I'd seen worse.

“I suppose we have a bit of a reputation, nurses
... you know. It's being surrounded by sickness all day that does it. You
become more impulsive, like there's a desperate need to enjoy life to the full.
I suppose it's because you're constantly reminded how quickly it can be taken
away from you.”

“Live fast, die young,” I smiled.

“No,” said Zara sharply. “I don't hold with all
that rock 'n’ roll rubbish. Maybe this,” - she raised her glass - “is a bit
self-destructive. But I value life; I really do. I wouldn't spend all day
trying to save it if I didn't. But it’s hard, sometimes. Last night I was on
the Neuro ward. The staff nurse had to tell two young girls that their mother
was dead. An aneurysm, it was. Which caused a haemorrhage. One minute she was
there, the next ... well, she wasn't. The oldest must have been my age, about
twenty-five or six. I tried to persuade them not to, but they still went in to
see her. In the end we had to drag them screaming off her body.

“When I got home I rang my mum.” She stopped
abruptly and glanced away from me up at the ceiling. I jerked my head upward to
see what she was looking at but there was only an oak beam. “I only wanted to
talk, hear her voice. It was late,” she muttered. “She was tired, I think, just
wanted to go to bed.”

She hiccupped and I started to laugh, then realised
stupidly that she was crying. I squeezed her fingers, tentatively.

“It's nothing really.” Zara mumbled and wiped her
eyes with the back of her hand. “It's just…like I said, not a very good day.”

Zara shifted in her seat and leaned forward. She
looked like she'd spotted someone at the bar. She glanced back at me, her
watery eyes suddenly alert, and lifted her glass. “Another?”

I nodded, and leaned back into my seat. I watched
as Zara weaved her way quickly through the crowds towards the bar area. Just before
she reached the bar she stopped and tapped the arm of an attractive black man.
Her back was to me but I could clearly see his expression as he swung round to
face her. It was one of extreme annoyance. He looked back at the man with whom
he'd been talking, who smiled and backed away towards another group. He shoved
his hands into his pockets and turned back to Zara. They spoke for a few
minutes before he lifted both hands up abruptly as if he was a policeman
stopping traffic, then he turned round and walked off in the direction of the
door. Zara disappeared after him.

I lit another cigarette and waited patiently.
After ten or fifteen minutes she returned to the table with two large whiskies
and slipped in beside me again. We drank in silence for a minute. The whisky
was starting to have a pleasantly anaesthetic effect on my ankle.

Zara sat beside me and sniffed and wiped at her
eyes with her sleeve while I tried to think of something to say.

“I can't take the exams, you see,” she said
eventually. “If I was qualified ... things would be different. Bloody exams.”
She took a huge sip of her whisky and turned to me. “You know I only became a
nurse because I failed my art degree. Or dropped out, I should say. Three
months before my finals.”

“What?” I was horrified. “After all that work?”

“I know, I know.” A wry smile flickered on Zara's
lips and was replaced by an anxious frown. “But I'm serious, Lizzie. I just
can't handle the pressure. I worked hard at school and somehow got through, but
I only sat one A-level. I've studied and trained for every module of the first
two years of the RGN, but without sitting the exams. Until I do,” she shrugged,
“I remain Nurse Bedpan. There's this other staff nurse on the Neuro Ward, she
finds fault with everything I do. It's getting so I can't bear working with
her. I'm losing my confidence around her. Today she started making snide
comments about Joel. He's my - one of the doctors I'm seeing.” She glanced at
me sideways. “Kind of. We're supposed to be a secret,” she added. “Also he's
black. She's found out and she doesn't approve.”

“Jesus, Zara, you want to report her, you know.
That's harassment,” I said.

“It's not that easy though,” she sighed. “She's a
good nurse; she has a lot of respect from senior staff. And it's so covert that
no-one else is ever witness to it. I'm sure she would just deny it, and make me
out to be paranoid or over-sensitive or something. That's the sort of person
she is. And then it would be ten times worse. I'd end up believing whatever was
said about me. At least at the moment I'm hanging on by a shoestring to my self-respect.”

I nodded and sipped my drink in silence. It was
easy to give advice when you were on the outside of things looking in.

“And then there's Joel. That's the other problem,”
Zara confessed finally. “He was here tonight, actually, but he left.”

“I know,” I said. “I saw him.”

“Ah.” She sipped carefully at her drink. “It's not
going very well,” she admitted. “It really isn't going anywhere. He's very...” she
tailed off.

“Very what?” I asked her.

“Uncommitted. Ambivalent.”

“Your usual type,
then,” I smiled.

Zara pursed her lips. “I
don't know what you mean.”

The bell rang for last orders. Zara went to the bar and
came back a few minutes later with another large whisky for each of us. I lit
another cigarette. It had been a long day and I had eaten practically nothing;
I was already decidedly far from sober, but I was feeling ridiculously happy to
be with Zara again, and wasn't looking forward to going home again to my empty
flat. As if reading my thoughts Zara took my arm and said, “Come back and stay
at my place. I share a house with three other nurses. It's only round the
corner. You can't walk, and besides it's ages since I've seen you.”

“When
was
the last time we saw each other?”
I asked her.

Zara shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. “I
don’t know. I left Cambridge after Doug and I parted. It was nearly two years
ago.”

“So, what happened?”

“Nothing. He chose to stay with her.” She paused. “And
he didn’t want the baby.”

“The
baby
? What baby?”

“Our baby.”

“You were pregnant?”

“For a while, yes.”

“So…what happened?” I asked again.

“I had a termination,” she said. I leaned forward
in my seat. Zara was speaking so quietly I could barely hear her. “There were
reasons.”

“Well, I’m sure there were. It’s not easy bringing
up a baby by yourself.”

“No, but I would have done. That wasn’t it. I
would have loved it. More than anything in the world.”

“So why, then?”

“I don’t know. I was crazy. I’ve regretted it ever
since. If I could turn back the clock, I would.”

“There’s no point regretting things, Zara,” I
said. “You can’t live in the past.”

“Wanna bet?” she said.

When we got outside, the wheelchair, inevitably, had gone.
The cool air and the final whisky were having the same effect on Zara as they
were having on me, and when it came to walking, she wasn't faring much better
than I was.

“Just hold on to me round my neck,” she said,
grabbing me round the waist. I put my arms round her. Her head only came up to
my shoulder and, despite her strength, the inequality in our size and build and
the whole situation struck me as suddenly very funny. I began to giggle, and
was soon shaking with laughter.

“Stop it,” pleaded Zara, laughing herself. “I
can't carry you when you're wobbling like that!”

I laughed even harder. Immobilised by the stitch
that had developed in my stomach and the giddiness in my head, I doubled up and
with Zara laughing as loudly as I was and loosening her grip on me, we both
sank to the pavement. People were walking past on the way home from the pub.
They watched us as they passed but, typically, didn't stop. Eventually, Zara
sat up and shook me.

“This is serious,” she said. “I've got to get up.
I need to go to the loo.”

“Oh no,” I moaned. “You can't leave me here.”

“Of course not,” said Zara. “I can carry you. As
long as you stop laughing. Now come on.”

Getting me up again took a long time. Every effort
on Zara's part to lift me was thwarted by my renewed fits of giggles, which
were caused by her putting her hands under my armpits, where I was incredibly
ticklish. In the end she swung my legs across the kerb and stood in the road
over me, yanking me forward by the wrists. She caught me as I reeled towards
her.

''Now hold tight.” She hoisted me over her
shoulder and we set off again in the direction of the hospital.

Zara was deep in concentration, bent on her
mission. I was feeling less hysterical and slightly sick. We stumbled
wordlessly through the grounds and out onto the opposite side.

“We're nearly there,” said Zara, stopping for a
moment and crossing her legs. “Not far now.”